Patient treatment experiences within hospitals and other healthcare facilities can vary in numerous ways, including differences in initial interaction between a patient and caregivers, diagnosis, progression of treatment, physical movement of a patient within a facility, length of stay, recovery, and rehabilitation. For example, in some cases, a patient initiates interaction with a hospital by arriving at an emergency room to have an immediate need (such as an injury, heart failure, sudden pain, or other sudden health emergency) addressed by the hospital staff. From there, the patient may be rushed into surgery, scheduled for surgery at a later time, given one or more medications, scheduled for a later diagnostic consultation, treated and released, removed to an intensive care unit, moved to a recovery ward, or any other myriad actions could be taken with respect to the patient. As another example, in some cases, a patient initiates interaction with a hospital by scheduling a surgical procedure. In such a scenario, the patient may, for example, arrive at the hospital, be prepped for surgery, undergo the surgical procedure, spend an amount of time in a recovery ward, and then be moved to a general hospital ward before being released from the hospital and sent home.
In many cases, one or more surgical procedures make up part of a treatment plan for a patient. There are multiple environments that patients can be transitioned through after a surgical procedure. Immediately after a procedure, patients are gradually brought back to a stable condition, after which they are discharged to the home or a long-term care setting. The initial recovery process starts in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for patients requiring 24/7 clinician oversight. An ICU has the necessary equipment to monitor patient status and high staffing ratios to aid patient recovery. This environment can be very expensive for patients, as it is often the highest per-day cost out of any room in the hospital—leaving this environment as soon as possible is beneficial as it minimizes overall cost. For hospitals that are built around critical-care, ICU patient throughput is a highly scrutinized metric for the efficiency of their overall operations—it is the hospital's most expensive environment to staff and resource, and keeping patients there longer than necessary means another patient must wait for a bed to become available prior to receiving treatment. The transition of patients out of the ICU is therefore preferred for both hospitals and patients, but the risks associated with premature discharge often prevents early release of a patient.
While a patient is located in the ICU, basic vital sign data needed to determine patient stability are measured, recorded, tracked, and trended, a process which can often be clinical staff dependent, and which can restrict a clinician to a particular physical location where they can monitor patients and review vital signs and other data in person (e.g., by viewing a bedside ECG display that utilizes sensors connected to a patient). Patient vital signs that are collected can include: blood pressure, body temperature, respiratory rate, blood oxygenation, heart rhythm (via ECG), and heart rate. Along with this, there are soft metrics also used such as patient responsiveness and visual assessment.
In some cases, the recovery process can include moving a patient to a recovery room, either directly after surgery, or after a period of time spent in an ICU. As with ICUs, patient monitoring within a recovery room environment also includes a heavy reliance on clinician interpretation of any data that is generated, and this data may or may not be easily available to the original physician overseeing the patient's recovery.
From an ICU or recovery room, a patient can often be moved to a general ward. General wards often include lower caregiver to patient staffing ratios and less or no vital sign monitoring. In many cases, vital signs are often not monitored on a near constant basis, but rather nurses will make rounds to measure key vital signs. Additionally, such vital sign measurement can often be limited to a few basic parameters such as body temperature and blood pressure. After the general ward, the next phase in patient recovery progression is often discharge of the patient. It is generally considered best for patients to reach home and recover in this more comfortable environment as soon as possible. Being released from a hospital to continue recovery at home can minimize the risk of contracting unrelated in-hospital complications, and can better allow family members to aid with recovery, at lower-cost to the patient.
During the management of patients in multiple in-hospital and out-of-hospital environments, various stakeholders (human and non-human) are interested in consuming data and metrics associated with patient status and the care received. These metrics and data are often resident in disparate human and non-human sources, and are communicated to stakeholders through various modalities. Furthermore, coordinating care in a patient-centric manner is difficult as many stakeholders are continuously changing.